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Forum:2013-12-18 (Wednesday)
Discussion for comic for . ---- Looking for something to do while waiting for the Wednesday comic? There are over a hundred pages in this wiki marked as needing work, and many others which should be updated. Choose a and see what needs to be improved. Even adding links between pages or links to the comic (with GG_link) is useful. Argadi (talk) 13:44, December 17, 2013 (UTC) We see inside Gil's lab: 1) Note the larger-than-lifesize picture of Agatha; 2) who is that in the revivification tank??? ExperimentMom (talk) 13:37, December 18, 2013 (UTC) : looks like (part of) a warrior wasp, but i don't think that's a revivification tank (or at least i hope that it isn't). Finn MacCool (talk) 13:47, December 18, 2013 (UTC) Anyone notice that there is smoke coming out of the top of Bohrlaikha's hat? The truly serious problem with building metal men is finding a power source that is small enough to fit inside them. One could use a small internal combustion engine, but it will be very inefficient. The mechanical man would never be able to pay for itself with useful work using any of our known power sources today. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 18:13, December 18, 2013 (UTC) :A hybrid combustion/electrical source would not be very inefficient; on the contrary, it would be just about the best source an autonomous robot could have (barring Dyne-water power plants or small atomic reactors). Run the engine at optimum efficiency when the batteries need charging, or when robot power consumption would be close to what the engine can deliver at optimum efficiency. Apart from that, liquid hydrocarbons are leagues ahead of any other power source with regards to energy stored per unit volume. And with an engine management system the engine can be performing at (near-)optimum efficiency over quite a wide range of output loads. External combustion engines can be optimised the same way, and can deal with solid fuels as well. :Whether Gil or any of the other übersparks can build such a power system? No problem at all, in my view. --Stoneshop (talk) 20:25, December 18, 2013 (UTC) ::I have been looking into the construction of such machines for a long time now. The problem is all but insurmountable for the technology we have available to us today, barring nuclear batteries. Even with nuclear batteries the machine would require prolonged periods to re-charge. I guess what I am say is that in the real world, humans are and will be superior in certain ways. Do machines have advantages over us? Yes in certain very particular circumstances, but not overall. All machines wear out. Why? Because they cannot replace there own worn parts with new growth. The longest you can expect a machine to remain in operation with one set of parts is fifteen years and that only if the machine does not do very much. Machines can, however, do one thing over and over and over with prefect repetition which is something that a human is hard put to do without special tools. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 20:47, December 18, 2013 (UTC) :::That's a real-world restriction with machinery, but in GG, where Agatha's pocket clanks can assemble clanks themselves (albeit less versatile and robust with each generation, apparently) it would be perfectly feasible to have machinery running way longer than you'd expect it to in real life (e.g. the muse Otilia, sufficiently functional even when severely worn), as well as having support clanks around that can do maintenance on the machine they're supporting, in case there are no humans to take care of that.--Stoneshop (talk) 13:19, December 19, 2013 (UTC) ::::Yeah, I have argued that the Dingbots are actually a form of the von Neumann probes, but then Kaja pointed out, in public, that the dingbots must still be wound by someone or something, and would therefore be limited and not really the potential threat of von Neumann type probes. I think that Otilia would be an exception in any Universe. She's more a work of art than she is a machine. Same could be said for all the legendary Van Rijns. She is rather like a carefully built automobile, whereon no chance for excessive wear was allowed and steps were taken to limit the effects of normal operation. In other words, one would have to pay at least ten times as much for a clank of Otilia's quality. It is rather like comparing a Mode T ford to a Rolls Royce--green apples to tree ripened cherries. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 00:45, December 20, 2013 (UTC) ::I would expect that gas turbines with generators can be very efficient even at such a small scale. Sine Wave Herder (talk) 04:42, December 20, 2013 (UTC) :::You would be right. However, turbines also create major problems with waste heat. They do very well under steady loads, such as stationary power generation, or in situations where you seldom vary power output, as with large ships and aircraft, but they are miserable for things like cars and trucks. We even tried them in locomotives for a while. At first glance, you think that turbine engines driving generators for a locomotive would be a good thing. Then the problem with that voluminous waste heat cropped up. The engine was trying to make up a train to pull and as a result, it parked under a bridge. The bridge carried a road paved with asphalt. Enough heat was thrown up under the bridge by the turbine powered locomotive that the asphalt caught on fire. What you would call a spectacular failure. The other problem you have with that kind of combustion is the large quantities of CO2 that would be generated combined with the enormous quantities of oxygen consumed. These two problems become acute in encloses spaces. Five minutes in a large room with a small turbine running would render the atmosphere in the room both toxic and overheated. Internal combustion? Same drill. There just is no convenient way to power a human sized robot. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 08:09, December 20, 2013 (UTC) ::::But on the airship those problems are much easier to solve -- you have fast-moving air, most of the time of sufficient pressure while you are at low altitude, and environment control system that must be capable of maintaining pressure, temperature and composition of air while the airship is at high altitude. Maybe clanks have to go into a different mode at high altitude -- can't get enough oxygen? Sine Wave Herder (talk) 22:37, December 20, 2013 (UTC) :::::Actually, Stirling engines are the best option for an airship. The load on airship engines is reasonably steady and the engines are still external combustion without all the drawbacks the gas turbine has, high waste heat, high fuel consumption and the need for exotic materials. The only reason we don't use Stirling engines in our cars today is that they don't do well under varying loads and that is a constant problem for wheeled vehicles. The most expensive thing about the Stirling engine is the silver required for its regenerator which needs to be made of an exceedingly conductive material. Silver is the single best conductor of both heat and electricity at room temperatures and above that is known. Powering a clank or robot with a Stirling engine might just barely be doable. -- Billy Catringer (talk) 17:37, December 21, 2013 (UTC) Wow. Bang has back!The original Richard Cranium (AFAIAC) (talk) 02:05, December 19, 2013 (UTC) Awww, Bang cares! Wouldn't have expected her to be the check against the "trap that doesn't have walls" for Gil. --MadCat221 (talk) 15:13, December 19, 2013 (UTC) :Noticed Bohrlaika having that Electrosword out in the first panel? I wonder what the power structure is in the current setting.--Stoneshop (talk) 08:49, December 20, 2013 (UTC) I am amused that Bang threatens Bohrlaika, then accepts coffee from her, trusting it hasn't been drugged. Gil does not have a printer for his console, but linkages that write and draw. And what is the skull for? That's too useful a space to waste on a non-functional decoration. -- SpareParts (talk) 00:35, December 20, 2013 (UTC) :That thing is a plotter. They were common before there were high-resolution printers, and I believe, they are still sometimes used for large-scale vector drawings. Skull is probably a decoration of a device or a protective case, originally intended to be in a place larger than Gil's desk. Sine Wave Herder (talk) 04:42, December 20, 2013 (UTC) ::Early printers were basically modified electrical typewriters; even if they didn't really look like one they were at least working on the same principle: hammering typefaces against paper, or paper against typefaces. Those were able to print only text. For drawings you needed a plotter, which moved pens across the paper not unlike an Etch-a-Sketch, and those weren't really suited for printing images as pen plotters don't offer half-tones. Current large printers are maybe half-printer, half-plotter, they don't use interchangeable pens, but ink cartridges. However, several current 3D-printers are pretty close to those early plotters, moving the extrusion head across the printbed in much the same way, using belts and pulleys. And if you want to see a 3D-printer worthy of GG, have a look at a Rostock. --Stoneshop (talk) 07:38, December 20, 2013 (UTC)